Man explains three ways to check if your iPhone has been hacked

Phone viruses seem to be on the rise at the moment, with malicious software spreading through apps that masquerade as normal services.

These might be installed by clicking a link you don't recognize or by being duped by a realistic-looking store listing, but you can often have scam apps on your phone without even realizing.

Thankfully, there are ways to check if apps on your phone are behaving unusually - as one helpful new TikTok has shown.

It's from TikTok account Empirical Training, which gives cybersecurity tips, and walks you through three quick checks you can do if you're an iPhone user and want to give your device a once-over.

The first sign that you might have a bad app installed is what the creator calls "a spike in data". You can check this using these steps:

1. Go into Settings
2. Tap on Mobile Data or Cellular Data
3. Scroll down through the list of apps

Each app will have a total for the amount of data it's used, and the biggest totals should be next to apps you recognize, whether that means Instagram, TikTok or something else you regularly use.

If you see an app there with a huge total that you never use, you might want to have a closer look at it.

One comment under the video shows someone making the discovery that their music streaming is taking up more data than they realized, for example: "Does Spotify? Use 90GB??"

The video continues, and the creator says the next question is "poor performance". This means going into Settings, then tapping on Battery and scrolling down to see what apps are consuming your battery the most.

Again, if there's an app on there you hardly ever use, it might be running processes in the background that strain your phone - this could be worth investigating and potentially uninstalling it.

Finally, the video says to check for "unauthorized credit card purchases" - this is something you can check in your online banking or banking app, and is worth doing regardless of what phone you have. Check your transactions to see if any have gone through that don't know about, especially if they're Apple Pay-related, for example.

If you have a bunch of transactions you don't remember, that's a bit of a red flag that your card or phone might be compromised.

All in all, these are three really sensible steps that could help you to figure out a lot about your phone - while you might not find an app that's hacking all your details, you'll at least get a sense for what is draining your battery and data, which is worth a decent amount on its own.

Featured Image Credit: empiricaltraining/TikTok